


Human Children

by galamiel



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:36:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galamiel/pseuds/galamiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Garrus had difficulty discerning between a human child and a volus without an exosuit. They seemed to leak from every orifice - water from their eyes, saliva from their mouths, some kind of green goop from their noses, and he had been near more than a few children who emitted the scent of fecal matter. They were pudgy and round, they looked like they would break open if they tripped into something. He wondered how the species had survived so long without an exoskeleton.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human Children

Garrus’s experiences with children, human children, had never been the best. Working at C-Sec, he investigated his share of deaths, including those of duct rats. He remembered finding tiny little limbs and smears of blood from children who had been chopped to pieces by the Citadel’s massive fans, remembered human parents screaming at him that it was his fault that he hadn’t been watching the ducts, rather than their fault for not watching their child. He generally chose to ignore their outbursts - the parents and children always seemed to be from the lower working classes, where they ran in packs under the supervision of maybe one or two adults or teenage children around the neighborhood. He knew just how hard it was to balance work and family, and he was a bachelor. He could only imagine how much more difficult it would be if he had children of his own.

He had seen human children outside of his work as well. The Citadel was made up of countless species, cultures, languages, and families. Even with his subdermal translator implant, he still found himself baffled by some of the things he overheard. Human idioms and hand movements had to be some of the strangest ones in the galaxy. And human children, well. Sometimes Garrus had difficulty discerning between a human child and a volus without an exosuit. They seemed to leak from every orifice - water from their eyes, saliva from their mouths, some kind of green goop from their noses, and he had been near more than a few children who emitted the scent of fecal matter. They were pudgy and round, they looked like they would break open if they tripped into something. He wondered how the species had survived so long without an exoskeleton.

The first time Garrus had met Shepard, he had thought she was a child playing dress-up. She was small, even for a human, barely five feet tall, with a round, soft face, round nose, and big, round eyes (her eyes were dark, darker than space, darker than shadows.) Everything about her facial features looked round, even the brown curls that topped her head. And it was all balanced hilariously atop hard, heavy armor. She looked out of place, looked wrong, even with, or perhaps because of, the two tall Alliance marines behind her.

(And yet, all that _wrongness_ fled when she chewed him out for being irresponsible, for taking the shot when a civilian could have been injured or killed. She looked twice her height, tall, imposing, those dark eyes flashing with anger. She didn’t look soft and round anymore, didn’t remind him of a child. She reminded him of a hero from a myth, righteous and strong, the shining beacon of all that was good in the galaxy. He had had no doubt that she would be the one to chase down Saren. And he had been there to witness it.)

For a while, Garrus had gone without seeing too many human children. There were gaggles of them in Omega, but they seemed to mostly avoid the areas with heavy crime, the areas he patrolled most frequently. He saw plenty of humans he would consider children, humans who thought they were adults because they were old enough to purchase their own pistols and armor and join merc gangs, yet still had the telltale softness of youth to their features. These children were the hardest to kill, the ones he felt guiltiest about when he dreamed of every forehead he had ever put a bullet through.

He wondered what Shepard had looked like as a child.

(When he finally saw Shepard without armor, her naked flesh bared for him, every scar on her dark skin a pale silver in the blue light of the fish tank, muscles tense and hard as she waited for his reaction, for any sign of revulsion at her strange human body, he wondered how he could have ever thought of her as soft. She looked like she was chiseled out of marble, every detail lovingly rendered by some artist he felt suddenly and inexplicably jealous of. He reached out, expecting her body to be cool and hard, knowing all the while that it would not be, and yet, somehow, he was surprised when it turned out to be soft and pliant, her brown skin smooth under his hands. And he thought, then, that maybe, just maybe, she sucked in a great breath of relief, those watery tears he had seen most often on human children shimmering in her dark eyes. _I want something to go right, just once_ he had said, and perhaps she had been echoing it back.)

He had never seen more human children in his life than when he worked with the refugees living at the docks in the Citadel. There must have been three or four human children for every human adult, ranging from newborn infants to teenagers who thought they were old enough to take care of themselves but still worried over where their parents were. There was no doubt in his mind that most of them at this point, were orphans. Some of them had only other children, their older siblings, to care for them.

There was a girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen, Garrus couldn’t be sure. He had always had trouble pinpointing years on humans. Unless they had beards or lines on their faces (he noted that Shepard was getting new lines every day, smoothed away from her face only when she slept), he could not be sure quite what age they were. But this girl must have been a child, too young to bear her own children, but still holding a shrieking baby. She looked tired and scared, and maybe Shepard saw it too, because she zeroed in on that girl, walking up to her and gently touching her shoulder.

“Let me hold him for a second and see if I can’t get him to go to sleep,” Shepard offered, her voice soft, kind.

It was the exact voice that scared little girl needed to hear. She looked at Shepard and recognized her - who didn’t know the face of the famous Commander Shepard, the first human spectre? It was plastered on vid screens across the entire Citadel, on posters encouraging humans to enlist in the military. Hell, there were even VIs with Shepard’s face. And how could this girl not trust Shepard? Everyone trusted Shepard. She did everything she could to help even the commonest people.

The girl began to tear up and she clumsily began to hand the baby over to Shepard. It was obvious she was new at this. Garrus wondered what had happened to her parents.

Shepard seemed much more experienced at holding infants, cradling the baby in her arms and gently rocking it, making soft shushing noises and cooing a song under her breath. The baby hiccoughed out a few sobs, clenching its tiny fists and waving them around in the air, its red face scrunched up. Shepard glanced up at the girl, who was standing in the same spot, looking worried.

“Go get something to eat,” Shepard said quietly. “Take a break. I’ll be here, I promise.”

Hesitant, but exhausted and obviously hungry, the girl jerked her head in a short nod of assent, slowly walking towards the ration tents. She looked back often, as if to assure herself that Shepard wasn’t going to run off with the baby (and where would she even go? Garrus thought irritably. It wasn’t like Shepard could take the baby on the _Normandy_ with her. But he supposed he could understand where the girl was coming from. The child was probably the only family she had left in the world.)

The child was nuzzling its face into the soft warmth of Shepard’s breasts, tiny hands patting against her chest. Shepard laughed a little, and Garrus couldn’t help but join in. She glanced up and flashed him a tired smile and then directed her attentions towards the baby again. “Sorry, little one,” she said to the child. “There’s nothing in there for you.” She fished around at her neck with her free hand, pulling out her dog tags and dangling them above the child’s hands, attempting to distract him.

“I didn’t know you were so good at this,” Garrus remarked, moving in closer, placing a taloned hand on the small of her back.

She laughed again. “It’s not really the sort of skill that usually comes in handy during the middle of a firefight,” she said. The child had grabbed her dogtags and was now slobbering all over them. Shepard gently stroked one of his soft, round cheeks with a finger. “There were lots of babies on Mindoir,” she said. “That’s one thing about being a colonist - everyone’s encouraged to have as many babies as possible. The whole community is pretty tight-knit, too, so everyone helped raise the kids.”

“Is this...” Garrus’s voice stuck in his throat. “Is this something you want?” His chest was heavy with guilt. This was something he could never give her. She’d never swell with his child, that was something she would need someone _closer to home_ to do for her. He felt a sudden burst of anger. Even the thought of someone else’s baby inside of her... his mandibles pulled tight to his jaw.

“What, children?” Shepard looked surprised, shifting her weight slightly from foot to foot in a swaying motion that seemed to calm the infant she held. She shrugged a little, the expression hampered by the child in her arms. “When I was a kid myself, I always thought I’d be a mom. But now...” she looked at him, dark eyes thoughtful. “Now I guess it depends on the circumstances. My skill set isn’t really tailored towards being a mother. That’s a harder job than the one I’ve got.”

“Well,” Garrus drawled. “I wouldn’t say that. Saving the galaxy is a pretty tough job.”

Shepard let out a sarcastic sigh, eyebrows raising. “And your mother must’ve had the toughest job of any mom out there. I don’t know if I could deal with raising a little Garrus Vakarian.”

Sadness and loss shot through him. His mother. He grew quiet and Shepard seemed to notice. She had moved in front of him and was offering him the now sleeping baby.

“What?” he asked her, regarding the child suspiciously.

“Just hold him,” she said. “I know you want to.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “And what if that poor girl comes back and freaks out seeing some turian holding her little brother?”

“Garrus,” Shepard sighed, and he relented, holding out his arms and accepting the baby. He breathed out a huff of soft breath in his sleep, shifting slightly in Garrus’s arms.

He was so soft. Incredibly soft, and delicate. Even the faint wisps of hair on his head were soft. Garrus held him like he would a precious artifact, with the utmost care. He didn’t even think Solana had ever been this soft, not even when she was a newborn.

Shepard put her hands on her hips and grinned up at him, “Well look at you,” she said proudly. “You’re a natural. Maybe we’ll have to steal the baby after all.”

Garrus’s mandibles fluttered in a small smile. “I’ve always wanted kids,” he admitted. “Never thought they'd be human kids, but, well, fate works in mysterious ways.”

“I have a feeling I’m going to wake up to find a dozen kidnapped infants in my cabin tomorrow,” Shepard groaned.

“Maybe not a dozen. Seven is a good number.”

“Joker’s going to be livid.”

“Oh, right, I forgot he was already on the ship. Might have to only kidnap six babies to round out the number then.”

Shepard laughed again. “Tell you what,” she said. “You don’t kidnap any babies, and maybe when this is all over, we’ll adopt a krogan or two.”

“Ooh, a krogan. I guess we might as well. We already raised one successfully, didn’t we?”

Lines appeared at the corners of Shepard’s eyes as she smiled. “Yeah, I guess we did. We might not need an entire crew to raise the next one.”

“I vote that we _not_ kill a thresher maw on foot next time.”

"We're not taking our future child to a strip club either."

Garrus sighed heavily. "As you wish, Battlemaster," he said, and suddenly sobered. He regarded the small woman in front of him quietly. "Maybe... maybe we really could adopt kids someday."

"Maybe," she said, reaching out to touch the baby's head. "We make one hell of a team, Garrus."

"We sure do," he agreed.


End file.
